A historic power grab requires a historic response. Congress has never acted to terminate a national emergency declared by a president, but it is crucial that they do so this time. Make no mistake: this was not an emergency. Instead, this was an illegal, anti-democratic power grab rooted in hate.
A coalition of organizations, including Indivisible, to reform and strengthen U.S. democracy, released the following statement following Trump's declaration of a national emergency to fund his hateful border wall.
Today on Capitol Hill, the Indivisible Project’s co-executive director Leah Greenberg joined Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and immigration and progressive partners including United We Dream, CASA and MoveOn, in calling for Congress to reduce spending on the Department of Homeland Security.
Once again, we see Trump responding to defeat with bluster, hate, lies, and threats. His speech alternated between platitudes and thinly-veiled attacks on Congress' authority to investigate and conduct oversight — attacks that Congress must reject. But Trump isn’t the story tonight. The real story is the audience in the room. It’s the 116th Congress that has more women and people of color than ever in its history. It’s about the powerful new voices who will be leading the effort to hold Trump accountable for every one of his abuses.
Trump held the country, our government and immigrant families hostage for more than a month, refusing to let them go unless he got his dumb, medieval wall. Today, he caved. He agreed to reopen the government without getting a single new dollar for his wall. He didn’t do this because he wanted to; he did this because he was forced to.
MoveOn, United We Dream, Indivisible, and other groups call for national action on Tuesday, the day Trump intends to deliver a State of the Union address.
What we saw tonight was another sham offer by Donald Trump that proves that he’s still not serious about ending the crisis that he created. Nearly a month into the longest government shutdown in history, he continues to get in the way of paychecks for thousands of American families. We need to open the government first, before talk of anything else.
Trump’s address tonight only demonstrates his willingness to manufacture a crisis—to blatantly lie and deceive the American public—in order to advance his destructive agenda. Americans want an end to the shutdown and they’re not buying Trump’s lies. Passing a funding bill should be the only order of business in the Senate. It’s time for Mitch McConnell and Republicans to do their job and take up the House-passed spending bills.
This is Trump’s shutdown. It was entirely avoidable, and now our nation will suffer because Donald Trump demands more money to fund his racist, white nationalist agenda. This fight is more than just about concrete and steel slats. This shutdown is about whether we as a country stand by while Trump tear gases women and children at the border; whether we allow him to cage and separate families; whether we continue to allow the Trump deportation machine to operate with impunity.
The Senate unanimously passed a funding bill that would keep the government open and it’s Donald Trump and his accomplices in Congress who are now bringing us closer to a government shutdown. It’s up to the Senate now to honor the will of American voters by rejecting Trump’s wall. Democrats have stood up to Trump’s racist, outrageous demands, and the progressive grassroots are with them.